Journalist, dissident and politician Jiri Ruml dies

The respected journalist, publicist and former dissident, Jiri Ruml,
has died. Mr Ruml lost his long and hard battle against cancer on
Friday night, at the age of 78 years. The father of former Interior
Minister and Senator Jan Ruml is mainly known for his active engagement
in the underground dissident movement in the 1960s and 1970s. He was a
spokesperson for the Charter 77 human rights manifesto and co-founder
of the samizdat paper Lidove Noviny.
In the early 1990s, he headed a
parliamentary commission to investigate the StB Soviet-era secret
police forces and was honoured with a Medal of Merit by former
president Vaclav Havel in 2001.